Use of web-enabled mobile communication devices, such as smartphones and tablets, has steadily increased in recent years. Many such mobile devices are capable of quickly collecting and disseminating large amounts of context-sensitive information to benefit a user of the device or other users.
Often, people use applications on mobile devices that leverage various sensors, such as global positioning system (GPS) sensors typically included in the mobile devices, along with user-generated data, such as text messages and videos. Many people access these applications or similar sources of continuously updated information. For example, Twitter®, Facebook®, and Foursquare® all provide updated user information, which may then be processed and posted online or to other users (e.g., subscribers) in a relatively short amount of time.
As an example, the mobile device may determine a user's location via GPS and then disseminate the location information, possibly with a message from the user or with other data, to update a location of the user and provide a review or commentary on a location (e.g., a restaurant review). Such disseminated information may be of interest and/or beneficial to other people who may “follow” the user.
Typically, this information is processed by servers, correlated with other data, aggregated, and then transmitted back to users before the information becomes stale or otherwise irrelevant. For example, when a user posts a message to announce her location to friends, the location information may be irrelevant if it is not received by the user's friends before the user leaves her current location.
It is also important that back-end support and processing of these mobile-based communications are fast, reliable, and implemented in cost effective ways. The back-end support may be implemented by leveraging cloud-based solutions to process and manage dataflow, which may decentralize the information processing.